Postcards from the Woodstock of the Mind

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is a Polish-born, London-based writer and researcher working in digital policy. Her research interests include socialism, urban anthropology, gender, civic tech, and economic development. She has an MSc in Local Economic Development from the London School of Economics and a BA in Anthropology and Media from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Margaret Atwood says to save stories like pieces of bent wire; popstar Dua Lipa recommends a shelf of novels. This is the Hay Festival, full of creativity and hope.

A cynical view of literature festivals would be that they are marketing vehicles that serve to provide promotional opportunities for authors and stimulate sales of their books. No value judgment here—it’s important to enable writers and thinkers to live off their craft and there is no better way to do that than financial support of their creative outputs. A more hopeful view of large literary gatherings would be that they offer space for writers and readers to ponder big ideas, exchange views about their favorite novels, discuss the nuts and bolts of writing, and brainstorm solutions to the contemporary global challenges we’re facing.

This year, the literary festival in the quaint Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye, dubbed

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Natalia Domagała:

is a Polish-born, London-based writer and researcher working in digital policy. Her research interests include socialism, urban anthropology, gender, civic tech, and economic development. She has an MSc in Local Economic Development from the London School of Economics and a BA in Anthropology and Media from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Publish date: 18.07.2023

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Paulina Wilk:

used be an editor of the Culture & Society section. She is a writer and journalist focusing on global development.

When a bomb explodes, no one notices the tree that catches fire from a spark. Absorbed by their own losses, people do not see the suffering of other creatures. In her 2021 novel, Elif Shafak reverses the roles. She gives voice to the plants, and they are the ones who tell a story about migration, memory, and the end of a certain world order.

This story is both little and big. It concerns a few people, one tree and two European islands. But it’s about all of us, too: humans, bats, and mosquitoes alike, the reflexive silence of plants, their relationships with genies, and the relentless movement that connects all life on Earth, despite the multiple divides we so violently entrench.

Postcards from the Woodstock of the Mind

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The Fig Tree Remembers

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